AN INCREASING NUMBER OF STREES CHILDREN

An increasing number of children are being forced to the streets 
as result of poverty, abuse, torture, rape abandonment or 
orphaned by AIDS.  

While the number of street children grows by the day, the community remains silent with the exception of a few individuals and organizations. There is no community outrage to the problem. We only shake our heads and moan about 'watoto wa siku hizi!' (The children of today!) and go about our daily businesses. Only the few soft hearted or religious ones will throw a few shillings to these miserable children and move on. 

The experience shows that the lack of enough knowledge and 
financial limits has been major problems that resist community action to find a lasting solution to the problem of street 
children. The community has also failed to organize itself 
into a dynamic force to encounter the problem.

An investigation done by (DIO) has identified three different groups with different view to specific problem within community as shown below:

• The first group is the people who are willing support children caring centers, but because of the financial limits they ended up providing insufficient support or even staying away and live the problem to the few people.
• The second group is the people with financial ability, but because of the lack of knowledge about street children and their need, they ended up ignoring them and completely failed to participate or even to support them.
• The third group is the people with financial ability and who willing to support children caring but discouraged with some non loyalty children care centers representative who misuse the funds and cause the difficulties to the children. This reason makes the sponsors ceasing or provides very low support and therefore the whole service ended up distorted.